The Annotated Pratchett File, v7a

As You Like It, act 2, scene 7: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; [...]”
- [p. 163/162] “I had this dream about a little bandy-legged man walking down a road.”

I have resisted annotating this for 7 editions of the APF, but oh what the heck: Hwel is dreaming of Charlie Chaplin.

- [p. 165/164] “I said, where’s your pointy hat, dopey?”

Dopey is one of the seven dwarfs in Walt Disney’s animated Snow White. Terry likes toying with Disney’s dwarf names. See for instance the annotation for p. 324/271 of Moving Pictures.

- [p. 167/166] “Brothers! And yet may I call all men brother, for on this night --”

This is (in spirit) the St Crispin’s Day speech from King Henry V. See the annotation for p. 239/238.

- [p. 182/181] “Double hubble, stubble trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bub---“

The witches in Macbeth, act 4, scene 1: “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire, burn; and, cauldron, bubble.”

- [p. 169/168] “[...] go around with axes in their belts, and call themselves names like Timkin Rumbleguts.”

This is a sarcastic comment on the behaviour of most generic fantasy dwarfs, but of course the main image it invokes is of classic Tolkien characters like Thorin Oakenshield, etc.

- [p. 173/172] “We’ve got a special on GBH this season.”

The abbreviation GBH stands for Grievous Bodily Harm.

- [p. 178/177] “The pay’s the thing.”

Puns on a well-known Shakespeare quote from Hamlet (act 2, scene 2):

“The play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king”

If you have access to the Internet, you can find online versions of all of Shakespeare’s plays at the URL:

<http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/>

- [p. 179/178] “I’ve got this idea about this ship wrecked on an island, where there’s this—”

This can of course refer to a thousand different movies or plays. In view of the general influences for this book, however, I’d bet my money on Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

- [p. 181/180] “Round about the cauldron go, [...]”

What follows is a parody on Macbeth, act 4, scene 1, in which three witches boil up some pretty disgusting things in their cauldron. Try reading both versions side by side.

- [p. 182/181] “He punched the rock-hard pillow, and sank into a fitful sleep. Perchance to dream.”

Taken from the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy in Hamlet.

- [p. 183/182] “KING: Now if I could just find my horsey...”

Hwel’s script is Richard III done as a Punch-and-Judy show.

- [p. 184/183] “Is this a duck I see before me, its beak pointing at me?”

Macbeth, act 2, scene 1 again. See the annotation for p. 65/65.

- [p. 186/185] “Leonard of Quirm. He’s a painter, really.”

Refers to Leonardo da Vinci, who also worked on (but didn’t succeed in building) a flying machine.

- [p. 186/185] “We grow old, Master Hwel. [...] We have heard the gongs at midnight.”

Shakespeare again: King Henry IV, part 2, act 3, scene 2:

“FALSTAFF: Old, old, Master Shallow. [...] We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.”

- [p. 189/188] “There’s many a slip twixt dress and drawers.”

A Nanny Ogg variant on the saying “There’s many a slip ‘tween the cup and the lip” (‘slip’ here meaning ‘petticoat’).

- [p. 189/188] “A week is a long time in magic,” said Nanny.

Sir Harold Wilson: “A week is a long time in politics”.

- [p. 193/192] “1^st WITCHE: He’s late. (Pause)” [Etc.]

Parodies Samuel Beckett’s classic play Waiting for Godot, where similar dialogue occurs.

- [p. 199/198] “Did you know that an adult male carries up to five pounds of undigested red meat in his intestines at all times?”

Stereotypical (but basically true) propaganda that radical vegetarians like to quote in order to gross people out and get them to stop eating meat (of course, the average vegetarian has about five pounds of undigested vegetable matter in his intestines). The cliché is used fairly often, amongst other places in the movie Beverly Hills Cop.

Terry had this to say on the subject: “Yep. That one I got from some way out vegetarian stuff I read years ago, and went round feeling ill about for days. And two years ago I saw Beverly Hills Cop on TV and rejoiced when I heard the line. God, I wish I’d seen the film before I’d written Guards! Guards!... I’d have had someone out on stake-duty on horseback, and someone creep up behind them with a banana...”

Note that in Men at Arms, the second City Watch book, Terry does manage to work in a Beverly Hills Cop joke. See the annotation for p. 251/190 of Men At Arms.

- [p. 207/206] “All hail wossname,’ she said under her breath, ‘who shall be king here, after.”

Macbeth, act 1, scene 2: “All hail, Macbeth; that shalt be king hereafter!”

- [p. 208/207] “Is anyone sitting here?’ he said.”

Macbeth, act 3, scene 4:

Macbeth: ‘The table’s full.’

Lennox: ‘Here is a place reserv’d, sir.’

Macbeth: ‘Where?’

Visible only to Macbeth the ghost of Banquo is sitting in his chair.

- [p. 211/210] “We’re scheming evil secret black and midnight hags!”

Macbeth, act 4, scene 1: “How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!” See also the annotation for p. 186/152 of Mort.

- [p. 212/211] “I never shipwrecked anybody!’ she said.”

Neither did the three witches from Macbeth, if you read carefully, but I nevertheless think there is a reference here: act 1, scene 3.

- [p. 213/212] “I’d like to know if I could compare you to a summer’s day.

Because—well, June 12^th was quite nice, and ...”

One of Shakespeare’s more famous sonnets (Sonnet XVIII, to be precise) starts out:

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate”

- [p. 213/212] “But I never walked like that! Why’s he got a hump on his back? What’s happened to his leg?”

A reference to Richard the Third. A rather appropriate reference: in Shakespeare’s Richard III, he is presented as an evil, lame, hunchbacked king, whom Henry must kill to save England. This is not historically correct—rather it is how Henry would have liked people to remember it. Had Shakespeare strayed from the ‘official’ version he would have found himself in deep trouble with Henry’s heirs—royalty was taken seriously in those days.

- [p. 213/213] “It’s art,’ said Nanny. ‘It wossname, holds a mirror up to life.”

Hamlet, act 3, scene 2: “To hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”

- [p. 214/213] “Ditch-delivered by a drabe’, they said.”

One of the ingredients in Macbeth, act 4, scene 1 is a “finger of birth-strangled babe, ditch-delivered by a drabe”.

- [p. 225/225] “—THE NEXT NIGHT IN YOUR DRESSING ROOM THEY HANG A STAR—“

Death is quoting from ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’, the song from the Irvin Berlin musical Annie Get Your Gun, also performed by Ethel Merman in the 1954 movie There’s No Business Like Show Business.

- [p. 227/226] “[...] who would have thought he had so much blood in him?”

Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, act 5, scene 1: “Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him”.

- [p. 235/234] “Like Bognor.”

Bognor Regis is a town on the south coast of England, between Brighton and Portsmouth. A sleepy seaside resort, it is best-known for King George V’s attributed last words, supposedly said after his physician told him he would soon be brought to Bognor to convalesce: “Bugger Bognor!”

- [p. 236/235] “Can you remember what he said after all those tomorrows?”

Macbeth, act 5, scene 5, from a another famous soliloquy:

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”

- [p. 239/238] “They were far more the type of kings who got people to

charge into battle at five o’clock in the morning...”

Shakespeare’s Henry V was just such a king, and Terry is referring here to the ‘St Crispin’s Day’ speech in King Henry V, act 4, scene 3:

“And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”